Moments of Revelation
by handful of sky
Summary: Firefly/Doctor Who Crossover, set after "Serenity" for Firefly, and after the Time War for Doctor Who, primarily the 9th Doctor with brief appearances by 8 and 10. In the aftermath of the Time War, River finds the Doctor, dying, on board Serenity.
1. Chapter 1

This was originally written around three years ago for a ficathon, but I figured it was high time I posted it here. I don't own the characters.

**Moments of Revelation 1/2**

***

The Doctor: "… The Time War--the final battle between my people and the Dalek race."

Van Statten: "But you survived too."

The Doctor: "Not by choice."

_From Dalek, by Robert Shearman_

***

The singing wakes River up. It's a lamentation--low and lyrical--and even though she knows every language ever spoken on Earth, she can't identify this one. She wonders briefly if it's a dirge for her, if maybe she just dreamed that she and the others (well, most of them) survived the attack by the Reavers. When she gets out of bed, the sound stops abruptly, but the deck is cold beneath her bare feet. She's alive, then. The dead either have more important things than cold toes to worry about or nothing to worry about at all. She climbs the ladder quickly and pokes her head through the hatch, waiting.

_No Reavers, no Alliance, no one here, no one to hear, nobody here but me..._

She reaches out for the others. Simon is with Kaylee, and they're actually sleeping for a change. Mal is dreaming of Inara, and Inara is dreaming of snow and red silk. River doesn't like to touch Jayne's mind--the others think _she's_ disturbed--but she can hear his snores echoing up from beneath the deck. Zoe's on the late watch, playing with the dinosaurs and missing Wash.

She hears the strange song again--louder now and mixed with something that feels like sobbing even though it isn't--and when no one else stirs, she knows it's in her head. She follows the trail through _Serenity_, through her mind.

Kaylee knows about the engines and instruments that keep the ship flying. Mal knows about all the storage areas big enough to stow a crate or two of cargo. But River knows about all of the dark places in between: cubbies, alcoves, service conduits. She knows how to hide and how to seek and it doesn't take her long to figure out where the song is coming from. By the time she gets to the shuttle bays, the sound is so loud that River's resorted to putting her hands over her ears. It doesn't help. She opens the spare shuttle's hatch and finds a pretty blue box full of pain.

Simon put her in a box once. River didn't like it.

_Box can't think, can't feel, can't scream, can't sing, can't cry--_

but this one does. She lays her hands on it but the hurt is too much so she pushes at the doors with her mind instead.

_Let me in. _

The panel swings open and she walks into a room bigger than any place in _Serenity_. A bell tolls far in the distance, reinforcing the idea that the blue box--

_TARDIS,_

it tells her--is enormous. The dirge fades away even as the sense of grief intensifies around her.

River knows that this can't be, but it _is_ and it's strange and magical and would be beautiful if it weren't in such an obvious state of decay. A thick blackish fluid is oozing from what look like wounds in the walls and fixtures, and there are more puddles of fluid on the floor. There is so much pain here, so much despair, and when she wanders around the center console in the impossible room, she finds its source.

When River turned three, Simon gave her a puzzle box with a toy surprise inside. When she finally opened it eight minutes later, she found a miniature porcelain doll, pretty and perfect. She dropped the doll some time later and then it was not-so-pretty and not-so-perfect, but she kept the box until she could solve it in less than twenty seconds. The broken figurine was lost and forgotten but now she's found it again, lying on the floor of the strange, almost-beautiful room.

_Pretty young/old man shattered into a million pieces._

On Miranda, the people laid down and they died because they forgot how to live. This man forgot how to live too, but River is going to help him remember.

***

She sits beside him and pulls his head into her lap. His hair is soft and fluffy where it's not matted with blood, and his features are almost as delicate as Simon's. His clothes are strange and through what's left of them she can see raw burns, strange angles that must be broken bones, and more blood, both old and fresh. She can sense that there are worse injuries inside, so she doesn't try to move him any further. Simon could set the broken bones, dress the burns, stop the bleeding both internal and external, but he can't do anything about the

_Gallifrey burning/Daleks gone/ashes to ashes/everything dies…_

buzzing around the Doctor's head.

River doesn't like doctors (except, of course, for Simon). The doctors that she's known offered only pain, but this man is _The Docto_r and the distinction seems to be important to him. Perhaps being _The Doctor _is what's kept him alive when ordinary men in his condition would be long dead. In any case, he's dying now, but River feels an odd duality as well. In some way that she can't quite understand he is hovering on the brink,

_dead/alive._

Then there's a spark of awareness and his mind asks the question that his body is too far gone to articulate.

_"Who are you?"_

She hardly knows where to begin.

_Albatross, little girl lost, time bomb, killer woman, weapon, why don't you cry me a _

"River."

Her voice echoes through the chamber and she's suddenly unsure of whether he's still capable of hearing it. She gives him her name again mentally, along with the self-portrait she holds in her mind: a wide, lazy, tree-lined ribbon of water meandering along a grassy valley, the current creating gentle eddies against boulders and rugged banks. There was a time when she was nothing but whirlpools, swirling round and round, but she's better since Miranda. Simon and the others expect her to be normal now, but River was never ordinary and she grows tired of pretending sometimes.

_"Let me go."_

His mind's voice is drenched with so much pain that she almost does, but she sees so many impossible things in his mind and she hungers to learn more about them. The Doctor is special, and not just because he's not human.

_I won't let you die like they did._

She can't explain about Miranda, no one can, but she can show him her memories. He hurts so much already and it's not fair to hurt him worse, but he has to see in order to understand.

_They're still in my dreams--the dead and the ones worse than dead. They're dust, but your heart--hearts--are still beating. You have to get up now. You have to try._

_"Too late,"_

he insists, but she knows it for the lie it is. She's doesn't understand most of what she sees in his mind, but she's sure that he's worn many faces and lived through several lifetimes. He could live through this too, if he truly wanted to. There's new life ready to burst into him, but he's shutting it out, damming it all up behind a thick, seemingly impenetrable wall.

River weighs the risks and the benefits of trying to save him and calculates her odds of success. If she's wrong, he'll die quickly, with no more pain. But River can't remember the last time she was wrong about anything.

She gathers herself and reaches out for him. Her earlier sending was from a time of peace and tranquility, but she is angry now and her avatar is dark, muddy, and storm-swollen. She is the _River_-- a cascade of white water surging against his self-imposed dam--and it's much too much for his battered body and mind. His chest hitches in a final, agonal gasp as the shock kills him, but the blockage trembles, trembles, and then explodes into a torrent of white light.

River pulls away from him just in time as the energy fills him and then spills out of every break in his skin. The floor beneath them quivers as the TARDIS keens in sympathy and the gonging first slows and then finally stops as the light fades away, leaving behind a different body. River knows the flavor of his mind, though, and that's changed only slightly. He's more bitter now, more acidic -- like the way the coffee tastes when Mal makes it.

He's also very, very angry.

***

End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

**Moments of Revelation, Chapter 2/2**

He scrambles to his feet, holds his hands up in front of his face, and looks at them in disbelief. "What have you done?" he yells.

_I've meddled,_

she thinks, but she tells him, "What you should have done for yourself."

His first face had been a kind one, even when relaxed in near-death. The face he wears now is as stark and stony as his thoughts -- all bony prominences and jagged angles over a core of pure granite. His eyes glitter menacingly and his voice is hard and rough as he advances on her. "You. Had. No. Right."

"You came here," she insists. "Your ship called me."

"And _I _told you to let me go."

She tries to touch him again, but his mind is quicksilver now--hard, slippery, fluid beneath her touch.

"Don't do that again."

He's looming over her now and River knows that no one in the 'verse as she knows it can possibly be a threat to her while unarmed, but she retreats anyway, overwhelmed by his intensity. When her hip bumps the console she puts a hand on it to steady herself, but pulls it back at the sensation of wetness. She looks dumbly at the ichor staining her palm and the Doctor takes her hand with surprising gentleness.

"I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't realize…"and his gentle words surprise her until she realizes that the Doctor isn't talking to her. He releases her hand and turns his attention to the console, turning wheels, pushing buttons, then finally giving it a thump with his fist. A column in the center of the console pistons up and down and the machine begins to make a sickly wheezing noise.

"Might want to hang on," he tells her. River's been traveling in space long enough to know that it's wise to belt in first and ask questions later, but there aren't even any chairs, much less seat belts, so she grabs the railing around the console and wraps her arms firmly around it. A second later, the room gives a mighty heave that nearly causes her to lose her grip. The Doctor is thrown hard against the console, but he's still standing--monitoring gauges and adjusting the controls. The control room continues to pitch and spin wildly like a ship on a storm-swept sea and the TARDIS

_falls, flies, soars like a leaf on the wind _

while River wonders how much her mind and body can take before she simply flies apart.

"Come on, come on," the Doctor's voice is encouraging. "Get us home, and I'll do the rest." After several more minutes of heaving and tumbling, they finally stop with a bone-jarring thump and the room is still and quiet once more.

River waits for a few more minutes before relaxing her grip on the railing and standing cautiously. The Doctor studiously ignores her as he opens panels and pulls out wiring, muttering to himself the whole time. River crosses to the door. She knows that _Serenity_ isn't out there anymore, but she wonders about what she'll find in its place.

The doors swing inward at her thought, and River steps onto the surface of a barren planet. They've landed on a rocky mesa and, although she can see for miles and miles in every direction, there's nothing to catch her eye and nothing to catch her mind. She can feel something vaguely like an emotional residue that tells her that this planet was home to millions, if not billions, of beings. But it's even worse than Miranda, now. There's no life here at all -- no animals, no birds, not even insects. The sun--larger than Earth's--hangs low in the sky and the temperature drops a little as the light begins to fail. The swirling dust motes in the air turn the sun's dying rays into a dull scarlet color that stains the boulders and rocks and it looks like

_the world is soaked in blood._

"This is Gallifrey." A voice startles her out of her reverie. "It was my home."

When River turns, she sees the Doctor--standing on a dead planet in a dead man's clothes--haloed in the light from a dying sun. She wants to weep for him, but she ran out of tears a long time ago.

"What happened?" she asks.

"You didn't see enough to understand, then?" He looks relieved.

"No. I saw lots of things, but they didn't make much sense."

"Good. You've got quite a future ahead of you, River Tam, but inventing time travel isn't supposed to be part of it."

"Time travel?" Some of the things she saw in the Doctor's mind suddenly begin to take on new meaning. "How do you know my name?"

"Let's just say that history will remember you fondly." The Doctor cups her face in his hand and captures her eyes with his own. "And bear in mind that if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Unnerved, River turns away from him. She's not comfortable with the thought of anyone seeing inside her. The more they know, the more they fear, and the more they think of her as a freak. "Why did we come here, Doctor?"

"The TARDIS was born here, so I hoped that she'd be able to find her way home." He pats the outside of the box lovingly. "She needs the energy from a dimensional rift to heal and to complete the repairs. And there's a huge one here now, thanks to the Time War."

_A Time War…_

She digests the thought. "What happened after your people lost?"

"But we didn't." He grins broadly, showing a mouthful of white, even teeth. "We won!" He throws his head back and laughs heartily and continuously until tears stream from his eyes. River--who has seen and endured more horror in her few years than most people see in a lifetime--feels her skin crawl.

"I'm sorry," she says as she edges back inside the TARDIS. She knows the words will never be enough.

_I'm sorry about your people and your planet and about what happened to you. But I'm still not sorry for what I did._

***

River spends the next few days exploring while the Doctor fixes and fusses with his instruments. She's found a superb playmate in the now-healing TARDIS, who rearranges rooms and hallways for her with abandon, constantly challenging River to figure out where she is. The Doctor finally finishes tinkering with the controls and disappears for a time, but when he walks in on her while she's poring through the books in his library, she sees a few obvious changes. He's washed the blood from his new body and found new clothes: dark pants and sweater, black, rugged boots, and a black jacket. It's all dark, somber, and colorless. He mourns.

"We're ready to leave. Shouldn't be as bumpy as last go around, but I thought I'd warn you."

River's not sure if she's pleased at finally being able to leave the company of such a mercurial companion, or if she's disappointed that her fairytale adventure is coming to an end. She finally decides that the experience is what it is, and wasting time dwelling on events out of her control is counterproductive.

True to his word, the Doctor handles the TARDIS controls deftly and easily, and there's only the slightest bump to signify their landing.

Eager to see Simon, River runs to the doors. When they open, she finds something she never expected to see. She looks over her shoulder at the Doctor, but he just shrugs and says, "Call it a parting gift."

River is standing on Miranda--newly colonized and bursting with life.

"Don't try to change things here, though," he cautions. "It can't be done. Just spend a little time and replace some of those memories you shared with me with new ones--with good ones."

It's a bright, beautiful day, and River finds a bench in a shady spot of the sprawling office complex. She's always loved to watch people and she does so now with abandon. There's a man and a woman walking side by side, but with a professional distance between them.

_They're lovers, but they don't want anyone to know._

There's a young man, not much older than her, chatting excitedly into his phone.

_He's going to be a father soon._

There's a woman tossing a coin into a reflecting pool for luck.

_If this new project succeeds, she may get that big promotion._

All around her, the people of Miranda are living for the day, every day, never suspecting that those days are already running out. But seeing them like this--laughing, smiling, enjoying themselves--makes the ruined faces and shriveled bodies of later years seem a little less horrific.

After a time, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS and sits on the bench beside her.

"Can you do this, Doctor?" she asks. "Can you go back to your world…before?"

"Yes and no. I could--that is, the TARDIS is capable--but I won't, because I couldn't bear to." His voice grows hoarse. "And I couldn't change anything anyway. All you and I can do now is hope that our people didn't die in vain."

"But they're already dead, and they don't even know it."

"Would it be better if they knew what was coming? They're alive now, and that's a beautiful thing."

_It_ is_ beautiful._

River stands abruptly and walks over to the pool. "Do you have any money?"

"I might have." The Doctor rummages through his jacket pockets. "What would you wish for?"

"You know I can't tell you," she says. "It would break the luck."

"Here." He presses a coin into her upturned hand. "Mind you, it's not legal tender anywhere but Grentis IV, but I suppose it'll work as well as anything."

River takes the coin--a green hexagonal disc--and tosses it in.

As they watch it sink, he says, "I understand why you did what you did, River. I'm not ready to thank you for it yet, but I forgive you. That's the best I can do right now. That, and get you back to your ship."

"Her name is _Serenity_."

"That's a good name. _Serenity_. Maybe I'll find it myself one day." He manages a small smile at the thought.

"Maybe you will."

_After all, sometimes her wishes come true._

They walk back to the TARDIS in companionable silence. The Doctor takes her hand, and she barely stifles a cry at the contact.

Sometimes River sees things that haven't happened yet. They're usually bad news. She sees something in the Doctor's future now--a grey, shaggy wolf with deep-set brown eyes, its tongue lolling out as it paces across the TARDIS control room. River has no idea what it means, but she senses that it is both the Doctor's salvation and his annihilation. She's meddled enough already, so she doesn't tell. He'll find out soon enough.

***

**Epilogue**

River feels the TARDIS arriving before she hears it, and she's back in the spare shuttle almost before it finishes materializing. She touches the blue wood to make sure it's really there and then the Doctor steps out--

_new, new Doctor_

--and she takes a moment to memorize his face again before wondering how many more times she can meet him for the first time.

"Doctor?" A woman's voice comes from inside the pretty blue box full of excitement.

"It appears I've mixed up the coordinates," he calls over his shoulder. "Hang on, be right back." He puts a finger to River's lips to shush the questions threatening to burst from her and whispers conspiratorially, "I'm ready now." The Doctor bows slightly at the waist, looks into her eyes, and says softly, "Thank you, River Tam. Thank you very much."

He presses a kiss to her temple and even though there is still a fair measure of

_pain/sorrow/anger_

in his mind, she feels something that wasn't there when they first met. His resolve to live shines brightly now. The once-crushing grief is tempered by his delight in seeing the universe through the eyes of his companion. No--not just a companion--his

_Rose_.

Mal's told her more than once that the first rule of flying is love. Love is what keeps your ship together, what makes it a home. The Doctor isn't whole--not yet and maybe not ever--but he's becoming because

_he loves._

The TARDIS, the girl, the 'verse--he loves them all.

The doors are closed and the light is flashing and she doesn't know if she can still touch him, but she reaches out as far and as wide as she can.

_You're welcome._

***

_fin _

***

Author's note:

The title is borrowed from the following passage from Babylon 5. I mean no disrespect or infringement.

_There is a darkness greater than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities...it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril, we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain._

_J., 'Babylon 5: Z'ha'dum.'_


End file.
